queer ideas

Facebook is the future. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't!

On Monday, I shared some thoughts on social media, with a particular focus on Facebook and Twitter.

My central point was that there are better routes to leverage the power of our social instinct than these two behemoths of the internet.



Beate Sorum, of the digital fundraising consultancy - b.bold - disagreed with me. As you'll see from her blog post, she thinks Facebook can be a great fundraising medium. And just because most charities don't have a Facebook plan, show very little care about what they post, fail to engage with followers and have no recognisable personality, it doesn't mean the channel itself is flawed.

Now, I think Beate is fantastic. If there’s one person you should listen to about digital fundraising it’s Beate. If I know she’s going to speak at a conference, I’ll be in the room, frantically tweeting ever drop of wisdom she shares.

And I think Beate is right on many points in her post. Facebook can be improved if fundraisers use it more effectively.


But that doesn't mean I've changed my mind.

We can do better than Facebook.

I'm not saying we turn our backs on it, but our ambitions shouldn't be restricted by what Facebook (or Twitter) can offer us.

As I say in my original post, I don't have an argument with recruiting donors and volunteers through Facebook advertising. We do both at Bluefrog for different clients. It can also be great for campaigns (as I also said). So no problem there either.

But the fact is, Facebook isn't designed to build engaging relationships with donors. And as such, we are working within an environment that restricts us – no matter how hard we try.

Wouldn't it be great if we could give our donors a place where they felt special?

Where they could be part of stories that unfold over time that show them what they have helped achieve?

Where they could be effectively recognised and rewarded?

Where we could manage cancellations?

Where we could give them a chance to upgrade their regular gifts or give additional donations with a few clicks?

Where we could look at their on site behaviour and construct communication materials that take those actions into account?

Just because we have Facebook, it doesn't mean that we should stop striving for better.

The Forrester report that sparked my original post showed that much of the money and resources expended on Facebook was wasted. It also showed that branded social hubs were better at engaging people. And that has been my experience with social sites created for charities – with one caveat.

And this is where I firmly agree with Beate. Any medium will fail unless we deliver content that is valued and relevant. If we don't provide that, it doesn't matter how great our channel is, it will sink without trace.

If Facebook isn't the future of social marketing, what is?

There was a short but intriguing article in the Ad Nauseum column in Private Eye last week. It suggested that some unnamed ad agencies were trying to bury a Forrester report that demonstrated that both Facebook and Twitter were pretty poor at providing an engaging brand experience.

The report highlighted research that indicated that years of advice to engage with ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ had been “wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources”.

Customised Facebook advertising is relatively useful for recruiting donors and volunteers and we’ve seen how online events like the #icebucketchallenge and #nomakeupselfie have exploded across the globe powered by social media. But when it comes to engagement, I’ve always thought the big two social media tools have been a couple of blunt instruments that simply can’t drive the levels of loyalty that charities are looking for.

So, I took a hefty whack on the credit card and downloaded the report to see what Forrester had to say about social marketing.

In short, their research shows that Facebook and Twitter aren’t the centre of the social universe. The average post reaches about 2% of fans and followers. More worryingly, less than 0.1% of them will actually interact with a post. And if someone wants to keep in touch with a brand, they prefer to do it via an organisation's website rather than Facebook or Twitter.

It backs up what we've found online at Bluefrog. For example, we’ve helped recruit over 17,000 supporters for lendwithcare.org but only 4% have been driven by social media shares.  Compare that to the 15% that signed up after a direct recommendation from a friend and 15% who signed up after being bought a gift voucher and it starts to put the power of Facebook and Twitter into context.

So what of the future for social marketing?

Though Forrester predict that Facebook is likely to become "nothing but a repository for display adverts", they don't think social media is dead. Far from it. They see the future as being based on smaller networks, branded communities and branded social hubs.

It's good advice. Though not all donors want a high level of engagement, a significant percentage do and branded communities are ideal for them. For World Animal Protection's, Animal Protector site we've found that the most engaged supporters will visit 3 or 4 times a week, every week.

Even though updates happen only once every two or three weeks, donors want to find out what other supporters think and do in response to the project updates. And that keeps them coming back. World Animal Protection's content is only part of what donors value. The chance to engage with other likeminded supporters (who are not Facebook friends) offers a sense of community that Facebook or Twitter can't hope to replicate.

Facebook and Twitter are not designed to be vehicles for charities to engage with their supporters. They might help us start a campaign or get a message out, but trying to build a relationship with donors via a system where even a large charity is going to be a tiny cog in a huge wheel is not going to be sustainable. Even if there is now some photographic proof that Likes are finally changing people's lives.

Please like the condescending corporate brand page

I couldn't help but recognise the behaviour of a fairly significant number of charities on the Condescending Corporate Brand Page. It's a spoof Facebook page which usefully highlights some of the more annoying things that organisations do on the social networking site.

We know that most people like corporate brands on Facebook because of discounts. And when it comes to charities, social badging tends to be the key driver.

Which begs the question why we see so much completely ineffective quirky and fun stuff, along with the ubiquitous requests to 'hit like' and share posts on charity pages. Perhaps it's time for us to re-think what people actually want from a charity on Facebook and start delivering it.

Thanks to the Harvard Business Review for featuring the Condescending Corporate Brand Page. As they say, "Like it, share it, but please – don't do it".

Five things we learned at the IFC

Following a very enjoyable few days at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam, I've put together my key take aways from the event.

1. There's loads more to data than just numbers.

Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud's chief scientist, has a job where he can crunch millions of numbers from a huge range of charities. If a question pops into his head, it doesn't take him long to find the answer.

In his session, Chuck shared some of his findings which included the following juicy nuggets…

• If someone calls you to change their address they are TEN times more likely to leave you a legacy (or upgrade, or set up a regular gift or anything else you might ask them to do).
• Donors who tend to give uncommon amounts (e.g. £32) are much easier to upgrade than those who give common amounts (e.g. £25).
• Donors get hooked on giving amounts. After 4 years they are 80% more likely to stick to their preferred amount rather than increase their gift (rising to 90% after 5 years).
• Calling a donor to thank them (whether you speak to them or just leave a message on the answer phone) can increase their next year's gift value by up to 40%.
• Misspelling someone's last name can decrease gift size by up to 12%.

2. Old school communications are the best for building deep engagement

AJ Leon is Chief Maker of Trouble (that's a real job title) at Misfit Inc. in New York. AJ told a story of how he helped raise $72,000 for a total cost of $250. He included a few key insights too...

• Stories have to have conflict. If Frodo had just skipped into Mordor and tossed the ring into the volcano, no one would have cared.
• The tools of fundraising are changing, but the principles of engagement are the same.
• People don't automatically trust big brands any longer - including charity brands.
• Never let your organisation get in the way of a good story.
• When launching a campaign always ask which bloggers you can link up with.
• Social media has made donating even more annoying.
• Management boards kill great ideas.
• Things are moving so fast that spending time writing a ten year strategy is worthless.

You can see AJ's presentation here. And you might like to read Paul de Gregorio's thoughts on it here.

3. The recession is here to stay

Tony Elischer (amongst others) pointed out that the recession is going to be sticking around for a long-time yet but that was no reason to accept poor results. He highlighted the fact that over 60% of donors only give once, describing it, quite rightly, as shameful...

"That's not the fault of people who are giving. That's our fault. We're still not getting that second gift."

He showed how organisations like Christian Aid have bucked the trend by fundamentally changing their fundraising offer, recruiting donors by focusing on work that donors want to support and allowing them to give in the way that works for them.

4. Rubbish in = rubbish out

Direct Mail is working. Digital is working. Mobile is working. The trouble is they don't work if the underlying idea, content and offer is rubbish.

5. Everything on the internet is just speeded up direct marketing

Beate Sorum of the Norwegian Cancer Society put together a great presentation that tackled one of the ongoing myths of the fundraising world – that digital fundraising is magic. It isn't.

What was particularly interesting about Beate's presentation was the distinction she made between communicating online and through a press ad or DM pack. The difference is one of size. And that's the problem...

"On the internet we can put up any crap...so we forget to prioritise, we forget to ask and we forget to rigidly monitor and analyse".

Her advice was that we should re-learn our direct marketing and remember to test what we ask for, how often we ask and who we ask.

Or in other words, we need to give donors an opportunity to do something they want about something they care about.

You can see Beate's presentation here.

What would happen if you lived your real life like your virtual one?

A rather entertaining viral video from the English National Opera, that demonstrates what might happen if you used Facebook and Twitter rules for your real life.

Nothing really to add apart from the obvious - not all friends are friends.

How to make a social stew

Last month I featured an episode of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle where he shared his views on why celebrities get involved with charites.

I recently discovered he's just published a presentation on what he could do to boost his social media presence. As you'll see, the strategy included:

• Redesigning his Facebook page
• Building a Stewart Lee photo app
• Creating a game based on Angry Birds
• Strategically integrating Stewart into popular online brands

It looks like he ignored the recommendations and decided authenticity was a better route to follow. If you ever receive advice like this, I suggest you do the same.

The web is older and so are (some of) its users

A rather interesting statistical view of the digital landscape in Europe has just been published by comScore.

The report provides insights on content categories, trends in social networking (and the knock-on effects on email and instant messaging), with a great snapshot of what's happening in online advertising, video, search and smartphone use.

Key points worth highlighting (with a nod to the older demographic that tends to interest fundraisers) include:

• The Dutch and the British spend most time online (31.39 and 30.38 hours / month respectively).
• Europeans spend more time on Facebook than any other site.
• As you might imagine, this means social networking and photo sharing are the fastest growing things to do on the web.
• Which also means that social networking has been the main driver in the growth in display advertising.
• Email use is still growing amongst those aged 35 and over (though nowhere near as fast as social networking).
• There seems to be a shifting preference to watch fewer, longer videos online (the average length of a video is now 5.6 minutes).
• Europe-wide, smartphones account for about 30% of the mobile market.
• 28% of European Facebook users are aged over 45...

...but over 36% of LinkedIn users are in the same age group.

With the significantly older (and wealthier) profile of LinkedIn users, it makes me wonder why I hardly ever hear about it as a fundraising medium. It might not be as sexy as Facebook and Twitter, but with the right offer it could be far more successful.

I personally find LinkedIn a great source of information on attitudes to giving amongst higher-value donors. We are just starting to use it to enhance the higher-value DM appeals that we create at Bluefrog. As you can imagine, It's a great way of learning about prospects. But it's useful in a number of other ways too.

If you're new to fundraising on LinkedIn, you might find these tips or this case study useful.

I'd also suggest you download the full paper from comScore (it's available here free of charge but registration is required). You'll also find the 2010 US digital review and the 2010 mobile year in review at the same site.

Whatever Jumo is, it isn't magic

I'm sure people sometimes confuse me with Harry Potter.

They invite me in to discuss a new piece of work and the conversation goes a little like this...

Hopeful fundraiser: We need to raise (insert very large sum of money of your choice here) urgently.

Me: Ok. What do you need it for?

Hopeful fundraiser: General running costs. We are looking at a shortfall. We need the money as soon as possible.

Me: What's the goal of your organisation?

Hopeful fundraiser: Fighting poverty.

Me: Can you give me some specific examples of what you do and what you've achieved?

Hopeful fundraiser: (sliding last year's annual report across the table) It's all in here.

Me: (quickly scanning through annual report trying to find something that I could use to interest a potential donor). I might need a little more than this. Have you any Interviews with those you've helped showing how you've changed peoples' lives? Any photographs? Case studies? Stories? Real life examples that I could use to demonstrate your organisational impact?

Hopeful fundraiser: Nope. Sorry. Our staff are too busy to collect that sort of information. It's not part of their core task. We just don't have the resources available for that.

Me: Any budget?

Hopeful fundraiser: (shakes head)

Me: Ok. That's not a problem. Let me just get my magic wand out and (theatrical flourish) hey presto! (money starts falling from the sky).

Hopeful fundraiser: Excellent. If you could do that again, it would send a great message to the trustees. They might even consider paying you next time.

I'm many things. But I'm not magic. And unfortunately, I don't think Jumo is either.

But before I explain why, I should perhaps give you a quick synopsis of what Jumo actually is just in case you haven't heard of it yet...

Jumo is a 'social network for the social sector'. You can get more details in this video, from this blog post and in this article.

It was created by one of the people who brought you Facebook – Chris Hughes (who also looked after the online organisational activity for Barack Obama's election campaign and created my.barackobama.com).

And that sounds exciting doesn't it? Everyone uses Facebook (well 550 million of us do - which is about 8% of the global population).

And if there is something that Facebook knows a little about. It's getting people to do stuff online.

After joining Juno, you can choose to follow a selection of charities and other non-profits. You'll also notice that your Facebook friends who've also signed up will appear on your home page.

Your home page is filled with feeds from Facebook, Twitter, blogs and news sites updating you on what your charities are up to and what your friends are saying about them.

And this is what makes Jumo different. There are a huge number of online giving platforms – JustGiving, See The Difference, Causes, ChipIn (and others) – that concentrate on generating donations.

But as Hughes explains, at it's heart, Jumo is about building relationships...

"A relationship is built over time. Maybe you start volunteering. Maybe you do start to give money. Then maybe you tell all your friends and family and co-workers about it. You personally feel a sense of ownership, and the technology enhances that relationship".

In another interview, he adds... 

"We're trying to avoid the classic feeling that a lot of people have when they start talking to a non-profit or NGO. It's always, 'Oh, they want my money.' But we're not going to start or end there."

"We are really more like a social news site. We believe that sustained giving happens only after you get to know an organisation."

"It [Jumo] becomes a bucket for all information that's being produced by or about the organisation, including links to everywhere they live on social media platforms."

People can give through Jumo (though only to US charities at the moment). All donations are handled by Network for Good and donors have an option to add a 'tip' to their gift to help fund Jumo. Then Network for Good "acknowledges the donation and send the donor a tax receipt."

Algorithms ensure the most relevant information from sources such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and news reports is pushed to the front of Jumo, based on how many people are liking or commenting. Each charity can also manually control what appears in a similar way to how an administrator might control a Facebook page.

But it is automation which Hughes believes is important. In a live discussion on The Chronicle of Philanthropy, he stated...

"We're trying to build technology to automate social media engagement. We know nearly all non-profits are resource constrained, so we're trying to automate things as much as possible, while at the same time enabling the organisations that do have people working in their social media sphere can use Jumo as a complement to their existing efforts"

"After the Obama campaign, I spent a year talking to as many people as I could in the international development world and in the social sector here domestically. The one thing that I kept hearing again and again was, "I am resource constrained. How can I find a tool that helps me use social media to engage my supporters but doesn't increase my costs?" Jumo grew out of that frustration."

And therein lies the problem.

When Chris spoke to charities, it looks like he heard something similar to my story – that they want magic – engaged and loyal supporters without having to put the work in to build relationships.

And though it is early days, I don't think Jumo is going to turn out to be the magic wand people are looking for. My Jumo is delivering a random series of disjointed chunks of information from various feed sources that talk about a wide range of areas of different charities' work, but really don't engage at all. My facebook friends are rather quiet too.

It's like reading a giant compendium of various charities' annual newsletters and annual reports. It is quite a chore. I'm not getting much sense of a relationship at all.

But that doesn't mean Jumo is a waste of time. It can work – but only if charities are willing to put the time and effort in to make the content valuable. 

Donors respond to organisations that show them that they are special, that personalise communications, that tell them relevant and engaging stories and that demonstrate that the organisation knows who they are and shows them that they are valued.

That means the automation needs to be turned off on Jumo. Instead charities should concentrate on combining it with DM appeals and emails as a means to show people what their gifts are doing. That way it could develop into something rather fantastic.

Otherwise it could present your charity to your donors in a similar way to those boring corporate Facebook accounts that no one wants to 'friend'. And we all know what they look like...

 

With thanks for the illustration to Tom Fishburne which is packed full of great cartoons that he allows bloggers to feature for free. Thanks also to @jeffbrooks of futurefundraisingnow.com for the heads up on Tom's work.

 

Online donors are old-fashioned too

A particularly interesting report has just been published by Network for Good and Truesense Marketing.

It looks at online giving in the US. It's a massive study that covers $381 million in online giving through Network for Good's platform including 3.6 million gifts to 66,470 different nonprofits from 2003-2009.

But rather than recounting list after list of statistics, the paper is actually about the online relationship that charities have with donors. And every page says pretty much the same thing:

The better the relationship, the more a donor is likely to give.

It's as simple as that.

The paper is packed full of evidence that shows just how important builing an emotional connection is. Take, for example, the impact of giving directly through charity sites, giving portals and social networking sites like Facebook charity pages from Causes. The study shows:

• Portal donors gave smaller average gifts (25.1% lower) than website donors.
• While 10.2% of charity website donors were still giving on the third year, only 8.3% of portal donors were still giving – which is a difference of the best part of 20%.
• Social networking sites tend to generate the lowest value gifts. As the paper suggests, donors give through social sites because of a relationship with a friend rather than the charity or because it is convenient when they are in a receptive frame of mind.

As you might suspect, most donations are made in December and at times of disaster. What is amazing is just how many gifts are made on the 30th and 31st of december – 22% of all online giving in a year is made on the last two days of December.

This demonstrates how important tax is as a motivation behind giving (the 31st marks the end of the US tax year) as it dwarfs the peaks seen in the run up to Christmas.

It interesting to note that donors who give in December have a three-year cumulative value that's 51.8% higher than donors in the other 11 months of the year – perhaps because they are simply repeat giving to favoured charities each year when time is at a premium in the few hours before the tax year closes.

The paper also includes loads of other interesting nuggets of information, like this chart that shows online giving by time of day from 2008. It seems to me that the morning mail (both traditional and electronic) is a pretty powerful driver for getting people online.

It's a tremendous study and well worth reading. You can download the paper by clicking here (registration required). Though it is a report on the US market, a very large part is directly transferrable to what's happening in the UK.

Thanks for the heads up to The Agitator.

Taking protesting from the streets to Facebook

There are many ways to protest and with things like Facebook around, you don't neceassrily have to pick up a placard or loud-hailer and march the streets.

PETA proved this when they staged an anti-fur protest on DKNY's Facebook page last Monday.

Sixteen different users simply changed their profile pictures to letters (or simple blanks) which spelt out DK BUNNY BUTCHER.

You can read more on Mashable.